GNOME Chess

A free and open source 2D/3D graphical chess game for the GNOME desktop environment

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GNOME Chess (formerly glChess) is an open source and freely distributed graphical software that has been designed from the ground up to be used for playing the amazing chess game under the GNOME graphical desktop environment.

Supports a wide range of chess engines

The program supports and has been successfully tested with a wide range of chess engines and servers. For chess programs, it works best with the Crafty chess engine, but most of its features should also work with GNU Chess.

Beautiful and modern GUI

The application comes with a beautiful and modern graphical user interface, which follows the HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) of the GNOME desktop environment. However, it independent from the GNOME desktop, as it can be used on any other open source graphical environment. We have successfully tested GNOME Chess with Cinnamon, MATE, LXDE and Xfce desktops.

When the user opens the program for the first time, the game is ready to begin. From the titlebar, you can start new game, undo your most recent move, save the current game, open a saved game, resign, claim draw, save game on a different location than the default one, as well as to access the Preferences dialog, from where you can choose your opposing player, choose the difficulty of the game, choose the game duration, as well as to change the game’s appearance (board orientation, move format, piece style, 3D view, board numbering, move hints).

Under the hood and availability

GNOME Chess is distributed as part of the GNOME Games package along with the GNOME Project, but it can also be downloaded and installed as a standalone software. It is written in the Vala programming language, using the Cairo and GTK+ toolkits to render the chess board in 2D, as well as the OpenGL technology to render it in 3D.